1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a knowledge-based management diagnostic method, apparatus and storage medium, and more particularly to a knowledge-based management diagnostic method, apparatus and storage medium which present the characteristics of an organization as various types of information in diagnosing its knowledge-based management.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is not easy to convey or make understood one's knowledge or style. More specifically, it is generally difficult to express exactly the thought or idea of each person or to convey it exactly to a third party, and one needs to empirically accumulate know-how in order to understand another's thoughts or ideas. Especially in an organization where individuals are expected to operate in groups, it is required from the viewpoint of knowledge-based management to grasp the abilities and features of each individual or to collectively group individuals who have abilities and features serving a particular purpose.
Various approaches for determining the features of organizations from the viewpoint of knowledge possessed by individuals have hitherto been suggested. For example, there are various methods wherein a questionnaire is distributed among employees or among the management of an enterprise so as to ascertain averages and deviations. In order to automatically perform organization design, there has been suggested an automatic organization design system wherein the knowledge of persons skilled or experienced in designing organizations is stored as a database, and wherein the organization design conforming to a situation is automatically performed by employing the database (see Japanese Patent Application (JPA) Laid-Open No. 07-319970). This technique discloses a database system for easily designing an organizational structure on the basis of accumulated know-how.
Knowledge-based management existing method for measuring the features of an organization from the viewpoint of knowledge is chiefly aimed at understanding the “status quo” of the organization, and does not consider the temporally changing aspects of the organization. An organization is expected to fluctuate at all times, and is sometimes motivated to actively change. Therefore, it is insufficient to merely consider the knowledge aspects of an organization in order to diagnose its knowledge-based management.
The importance of informal communities, as well as formal organizational structure, has come to be recognized as a circulation platform for information or knowledge in an organization (refer to Etienne Wenger, William Snyder: Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier, Harvard Business Review, January-February, 2000). No technique has taken into consideration the viewpoint of discovering or building such an informal community, or to effectively utilize such community in enterprise management.